


The Way We Wished It Would Be

by AstronautMikeDexter



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Missing Scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5120918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautMikeDexter/pseuds/AstronautMikeDexter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of vignettes written to fill in between scenes throughout season 5. Most will be focused on Carrie and Quinn's evolving relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Almost Worth It

“Quinn, are you still with me?”

 

“Hmm?” Quinn acknowledges blearily. The morphine is beginning to cloud his thoughts and the bullet wound is finally fading from an all-encompassing agony into a dull throb. For one more moment, he allows himself to revel in being so close to Carrie again. _It was almost worth getting shot for_ , he thinks hazily. The last tender human contact he had was the night of her father’s funeral more than two years ago; he’s worked hard to push that memory from his thoughts. When he was clear-minded Quinn could rationalize he was above this, craving physical connection with another human being. All he could focus on now, though, was the trail of sparks Carrie’s touch seems to ignite on his skin.

 

Carrie finishes bandaging the wound with nimble fingers and gently moves her hand up to support Quinn’s back as she pulls away from him. He has never thought of Carrie as the nurturing type until now, seeing this side of her. He wonders idly if that was a byproduct of her newfound investment in motherhood, or if this was simply a side of her that he hadn’t been privy to.  

 

“We need to get this off of you,” she says, thumbing the worn fabric of his jacket. She raises her gaze to meet his and even with the narcotic fast taking effect Quinn can see traces of uncertainty in her face mingling with the concern that had been there before. “Can I…”

 

Quinn nods and tries to straighten and support his own weight, wincing at the effort. He starts shrugging off his jacket but hisses at the pain that this causes, even through the morphine. Carrie stops him by putting a hand over his and takes over, leaning into him and carefully guiding one arm and then the other until the garment is behind him on the bed. Quinn watches through half-lidded eyes. His drug-addled brain conjures up a memory of walking in the dark with Carrie, taking his jacket off and draping it over her shoulders as he guided her to safety. He can't place the memory in the state that he's in- or even be sure that it happened- but just thinking about it stirs up feelings of protectiveness in him. 

 

Carrie sets to working on his t-shirt, carefully lifting it over his back and ruffling his hair in the process. Quinn tries to help by raising his arms but immediately recognizes his mistake as a fresh wave of pain radiates from the wound. He grits his teeth in agony and leans forward, collapsing against Carrie’s shoulder as a low moan escaping his throat. Carrie catches and holds him against her, murmuring comforting words into his hair. His mind is too clouded by pain for the words to register but he allows himself to be comforted by the gesture and the closeness. Once his breathing is no longer ragged and the pain has ebbed again, Carrie gently pulls the shirt over his head and lets it fall next to his ruined jacket.

 

The intimacy of the gesture cannot to go unnoticed. Quinn half-smiles, half-grimaces to himself as he thinks about the absurdity of the entire situation. He’s imagined this scenario in his head more times than he’ll ever admit to but never quite pictured it with a potentially lethal bullet wound.

 

Carrie’s fingertips drag softly against his skin and Quinn hears her breath catch. He looks down and sees what Carrie is looking at. An impressive bruise had bloomed over his lower back, where Carrie had shot him the evening prior.

 

“Christ, Quinn. Did I do this to you?”

 

“Yeah, well...” Quinn pauses, swallowing thickly. “I think I have more pressing injuries to worry about at this point.”

 

“If I had known it was you….”

 

“Think of it as karma, then. Payback for what I did to your arm back when we were still at Langley.” This elicits a smile from Carrie. She supports him as he leans back onto the rickety bed and lays down. He doesn’t bother to hide the pain this causes him; when it subsides, Carrie smoothes a blanket over his chest and leaves him to rest.

 

Quinn dozes, occasionally opening his eyes to see Carrie cleaning up the bloody mess that he’d made. He makes note as she rifles through his food stores and makes herself a sandwich, and then busies herself with the phone that she pilfered from his would-be assassin. For one less than coherent moment, Quinn wonders if maybe this is a fever dream, that he has hallucinated Carrie being here. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, he muses. He forces himself to focus and remembers that Carrie probably wouldn’t be wearing that ridiculous wig in any of his hallucinations.

 

As if she'd read his mind, Carrie’s hand shoots to her head and something close to a smile plays at her lips as she realizes that she has worn her disguise through all the chaos. Carrie tosses the wig haphazardly onto the table next to her and shakes her hair free from the bun she had put it in.

 

She turns around then and Quinn is still watching her – he feels like he should be embarrassed but he can’t bring himself to care.

 

“How are you feeling?” she asks in a low voice as she walks over and sits at the edge of the narrow bed.

 

“Like somebody fucking shot me,” he replies, his own voice sounding low and hoarse in return. Carrie huffs out a laugh and puts her hand on his knee over the threadbare blanket. They sit together in companionable silence for a few moments.

 

“There’s only one cot,” Quinn remembers suddenly. Of course, it had never been part of the plan for her to come back here. “There are some extra blankets in one of the rooms back there, I can sleep…”

 

Carrie cuts him off- she knows him well enough to predict what he is going to say. “Don’t be so fucking chivalrous. You should be in a hospital right now, I'm not letting you sleep on the floor." She pauses, thinking. "We should probably take shifts anyway to make sure we weren’t followed. I can keep a lookout for a while.”

 

They both know that she is humoring him; Quinn wouldn’t be able to sit up let alone stay awake to keep watch on a shift tonight. Too tired to fight her, Quinn nods gratefully.

 

Carrie stands up and returns to the phone sitting on the table, staring at the gruesome picture with a furrowed brow for several minutes. She transfers the data onto her own burner phone and sets about dismantling the one belonging to their attacker. Carrie doesn't want to take any chances of being tracked, once whoever was after her… After them… realized that they are still alive and they have the phone with them.

 

The thought makes her pause. With the day’s events, she had not had time to actually reflect on what had caused it all. Who would want Quinn dead, and why? The reason that seemed glaringly obvious to her was that killing him was a way to cover up the tracks after her own death. Carrie pinches the bridge of her nose, fighting against a wave of emotion that the adrenaline had been staving off. Quinn had gone to great measures to keep her safe, against orders… And it had almost cost him his life.

 

“Quinn, I’m… I’m sorry that you got dragged into this,” she says softly. When she finally gains the composure to lift her head and look up at him, she sees that Quinn is already asleep.


	2. Chief of Support

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You told me that you would give me an explanation once we were done working on your friend,” Jonas said evenly, “I think I’m owed one after a phone call like the one you made to me today.”
> 
> Carrie glanced at Jonas and then turned her attention back to Quinn. She wasn’t even sure where to begin.

Carrie and Jonas had done their best to place the IV into Quinn's hand. Despite their efforts, however, the infection did not seem to be abating; Quinn had been in and out of consciousness all afternoon. A tense silence had fallen over the abandoned building. Jonas sat several feet away from Carrie, whose attention had seldom shifted from the injured figure in front of her. Jonas watched, perturbed, as Carrie gently ran a damp cloth over Quinn’s forehead and neck.

“You told me that you would give me an explanation once we were done working on your friend,” Jonas said evenly, “I think I’m owed one after a phone call like the one you made to me today.”

Carrie glanced at Jonas and then turned her attention back to Quinn. She wasn’t even sure where to begin.

“Well... I was right. Someone did come after me after I ran into the woods,” Carrie explained. “But it turned out to be Quinn.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jonas exclaimed softly.

“Yeah, I know,” Carrie said with a humorless laugh. “It turns out that my name was on a hit list and Quinn was hired to take me out. But instead of doing that, he was going to help me fake my death and get away from here.”

Jonas gaped at her. "What happened?"

“Obviously, things went wrong. Someone tried to take Quinn out, probably to cover up my supposed death. We got away, but…” Carrie trailed off, Looking to Quinn with increasing worry. He had not awoken in several hours and she found herself watching anxiously for any signs that he might be coming around.

Jonas sat in silence for several minutes, trying to process this new information. He watched as Carrie gently called out to Quinn and shook his arm, still unresponsive.

Quinn’s name had sounded familiar to Jonas before and he had struggled to place it. Suddenly, watching Carrie call the sick man’s name in apprehension, he remembered where he had heard it before.

“I know who he is,” Jonas said softly to Carrie.

“What are you talking about?” Carrie replied distractedly without turning around, even though there was no doubt in either of their minds as to whom Jonas was referring to.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Jonas said, raising his eyebrows.

“I told you who Quinn is,” she said brusquely. “He’s a colleague… We go back a long way. Back to when I was still at Langley.”

“He was in Islamabad with you.”

Carrie had been focusing intently on Quinn but this caught her attention immediately. She turned around to face Jonas with a look of incredulity of her face. “How do you know that?”

Jonas stared at Carrie’s face for a long moment, as if he were trying to decipher something.

“I recognize his name,” Jonas said quietly. “I know about your nightmares, you know, even if you try to hide them from me. I stopped asking about them because you’ve made it very clear that you did not want to talk about what happened while you were station chief over there. You hadn’t had one for a long time but they started up again after you got back from Lebanon. There have been a couple of times where you…” he paused, sighing, unsure how to word what he was trying to say in his non-native tongue. “You would cry out to him in your sleep.”

Carrie felt irrationally defensive at his disclosure. “A lot of shit went down over there, and Quinn saved my life more than once. He saved it again, that’s why I’m even alive right now.” She stood up and walked away from the unconscious figure in the bed, wary of disturbing him.

“That doesn’t make any sense, though,” Jonas countered as he followed behind. “I don't understand. Why would someone hire him to kill you? He’s bleeding out in the middle of nowhere to keep your whereabouts safe.”

Carrie scoffed. “Well, clearly whoever it was didn’t know about our… Friendship.” Carrie caught herself and thought better of using the word ‘relationship’ to describe their association.

They stood together in uncomfortable silence. Carrie crossed her arms and found her attention wandering back to Quinn.

“Is that all there is?”

“What?”

“Friendship,” Jonas replied, staring at Carrie with a mixture of concern and frustration. “Is that all there is between the two of you?”

“Yes,” Carrie said with a scoff. “Of course.” She found herself lowering her voice involuntarily. She knew that Quinn was unconscious but she did not want him to hear this conversation. A nagging voice in the back of her head questioned why this might be. Did she not want to hurt Quinn’s feelings, or did she not want to rule out the possibility of something happening between them in the future?

“It’s just…” Jonas seemed to think better of what he was about to say and trailed off.

“What?” Carrie suddenly felt anxious. “Did he say something to you?” Carrie had left the two of them alone only briefly while she ran out and bought additional food and supplies. She trusted Quinn above almost all others in her life but the fever made him less predictable.

“No!” Jonas said incredulously. “I just asked because… Carrie, he is so devoted to you. You must see that.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head with frustration.

“Say that you’re done with this!” Jonas exclaimed, struggling to keep his temper even. “That's all I want. Say that once he’s better you’ll stop all of this craziness.”

A soft moan from the opposite side of the room broke the tense conversation and Carrie strode back over to Quinn’s side, relief washing over her features.


	3. Anything For You, Carrie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Have you heard from Quinn at all?” Carrie cuts Astrid off before she can finish.
> 
> “No,” she responds, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Why? Should I have?”
> 
> Carrie takes a steadying breath. “He’s gone.”

Carrie has been waiting there for almost an hour again, creeping in the shadows of the parking structure and jumping at every echoing footstep and car alarm. She paces in the darkened corner she’s confined herself to, pent up energy and frustration coming to a head.

 

 _You cannot lose it right now_ , she commands herself, _not here._   She lifts her arms and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing herself not to cry.

 

At that moment, she hears the sound of heeled boots clicking on pavement, coming towards her. Carrie looks up and takes a deep breath, composing herself.

 

“I know you’re here, Carrie,” Astrid hisses into the darkness. “And I’m going to start charging you for my bike repairs.”

 

Carrie straightens her wig and emerges from the shadows, striding over to Astrid’s grey sedan and sliding into the passenger seat without invitation.

 

Astrid glances around the garage quickly before joining her. “What the hell is going on this time? Were you able to find-“

 

“Have you heard from Quinn at all?” Carrie cuts her off before she can finish.

 

“No,” she responds, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Why? Should I have?”

 

Carrie takes a steadying breath. “He’s gone.”

 

“Gone?” Astrid says with dismay, turning to face Carrie fully. “What do you mean, ‘gone’? You said that he was injured, but that he would be okay...”

 

Carrie has been asking herself this same question since she arrived back at the safe house. She had been so singularly focused on the documents, so stupidly fixated _,_ that she had left Jonas to do a task that she knows she should have been doing herself. She knows that, had their roles been reversed and it was Carrie lying feverish and bleeding in that bed, Quinn never would have left her side for the amount of time that she left for yesterday. This thought alone makes her eyes sting yet again with unshed tears.

 

Carrie swallowed and tried to control her shallow breathing. Something about the situation made her feel like a criminal coming forward to confess a heinous crime to the authorities.

 

“He was shot, not doing very well,” Carrie explains. “I had someone come over and help me hook up an IV and then watch him while I tried to track down the documents. When I came back, he was gone. Jonas – my boyfriend – said that he called every ER in the area, searched within a mile radius, but couldn’t find him.”

 

“And I assume the reason he was not in the hospital in the first place has something to do with you?” Astrid says, eyebrows raised. “To make certain that you stay dead?”

 

“Yes. But he was going downhill and Jonas was going to take him to a hospital anyway... That’s when he disappeared. I thought, maybe, there was a chance he came to you.”

 

Astrid doesn’t respond immediately, just pinches the bridge of her nose and shuts her eyes tightly. When she opens them again she stares unseeingly in front of her, eyes glassy and grief-stricken. “Knowing Peter, he’s probably at the bottom of a river somewhere.”

 

“Quinn’s tough though, he’s a fighter.” Carrie shakes her head vigorously, not ready to face what it would mean if Quinn left with the intention not to fight anymore. “He wouldn’t-“

 

“Jesus, Carrie!” Astrid snaps, turning her gaze to meet Carrie’s once again. The despondence in her eyes has morphed into barely-controlled fury. “He was refusing to go to hospital to keep you safe, and then he disappeared- while he was bleeding out- when your boyfriend threatened to call an ambulance. Where do you _think_ he went?”

 

“I don’t know! He trusts you, I thought he might have reached out to you,” Carrie says, her voice wavering. She is unsure what she had hoped for from Astrid; perhaps an idea of who else (if anyone) in the city Quinn might ask for help, or places he might be likely to go. Or maybe just to be reassured by someone who knew him, almost as well as she did, that he wouldn’t go and do something as extreme as killing himself.

 

She has been steadfastly ignoring the ache in her chest, ignoring Jonas’ voice ringing in the back of her head. _He went off to die, Carrie. My guess is he's done just that_. But the pain has been building and she can no longer overlook it; her chest physically hurts with the knowledge that she may never see Quinn again. She feels like there is a dam inside her threatening to break at any moment.

 

“Perhaps you are underestimating the lengths he’ll go to, in order to help you. He may be tough, but he would do anything for you, Carrie.”

 

Carrie can no longer hold back her tears; she wipes haphazardly at her eyes with a dirty shirtsleeve.

 

“And you left him with _your boyfriend_ ,” Astrid says with a hollow laugh. “Are you blind?”

 

“Jonas has some medical training, he-“

 

“Enough,” Astrid seethes. “Get out of my car.” Carrie doesn’t need to be told twice. Wordlessly, she slides out of the passenger seat and shuts the door behind her.

 

Astrid rolls down the passenger window and pauses before she drives away, leaning over slightly so she can look Carrie directly in the eyes. “And please, never talk to me again.”

 

Carrie stands rooted in place for several moments, stunned. Then she turns and walks briskly back to her corner in the shadows. She leans against the dirty concrete wall as her legs threaten to give out on her; quiet sobs wrack her body as the reality of Quinn’s fate finally hits her.


	4. Deja Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie holds vigil by Quinn's bedside. Post 5x10.

The town square is dark and crowded; Carrie can scarcely see where she is going but she feels compelled to keep moving forward despite this, pushing her way through the mass of people milling about. The hot Tehran air seems to scorch her skin even though the sun has long set, and she can feel beads of sweat trickle down underneath the headscarf she had hastily pulled on.

She still doesn’t know where she’s going but the sense of dread and urgency tells her she needs to get there, and soon. As she’s approaching the front of the crowd, Carrie looks up.

The crane.

She’s been here before, she knows now.

Carrie pushes her way to the front and holds on to the fence as the crowd jostles around her. Through the wire she sees a form being jerked out of the dirty police car by armed officers. His hands are bound with duct tape and she knows. She doesn’t need to see his face but her fears are confirmed as they march him out to the middle of the square.

No. No, not again.

The officers roughly lead Quinn to the noose. Carrie cries out to him but the cheers and shouts of the eager crowd around her seem to swallow the sound. She looks up at the fence, wondering if she could climb it and run to him... To somehow put a stop to this before it happens again.

When she looks back, a woman shrouded in a dark headscarf has joined the officers and carefully fits the noose around Quinn’s neck. His face is grim and resolute as he watches her tighten it and then step away for the crane to finish her handiwork.

Carrie watches helplessly as his body floats higher and higher. She clings to the fence, terrified that without it her legs may collapse from underneath her. As the last bits of life drain from his body in fits and spurts, Quinn’s pale eyes turn and look straight at her, as if seeing through her.

Carrie’s attention is suddenly drawn back to the ground as the woman in the headscarf turns and pulls the garment off, shaking out her long blond hair. Her stomach drops as Carrie recognizes her own face staring back at her.

 

\---- 

 

Carrie wakes with a start, her heart racing. Knuckles white, she grasps the armrests of the chair she fell asleep in as if it were a lifeline. Looking around around the room frantically, Carrie reorients herself to her surroundings. The sterile white signature of a hospital room greets her.

She takes in a shaky breath, steadying herself as the events of the last day come rushing back. Her eyes fall on Quinn’s still form in front of her.

He’s still alive, she reminds herself. By some miracle. She studies the face that she knows so well, and that she saw only a day ago on national television. Carrie never would have thought the word ‘fragile’ would apply to Peter Quinn but this is the first word that comes to mind as she watches the hypnotic artificial rise-and-fall of his chest, assisted by the ventilator. He’s pale and she realizes that he looks thinner than she remembered even a week and a half ago. 

She doesn’t know why, but even the several feet of separation between them now feels like too much distance. Scooting her chair closer, Carrie reaches out and gently puts her hand over his. Suddenly it’s all too overwhelming for her, as images from her nightmare intermingle with ones from the video she had recently analyzed on a loop for hours.

Carrie presses her face into his bed. She squeezes her eyes tight in a futile attempt to keep the memories at bay; a muffled sob escapes her throat. Astrid had held her hand as she watched the footage and then stood with her afterwards as she smoked cigarette after cigarette with a shaking hand. Although they mostly stood in silent solidarity, Astrid had broken the silence to tell her one thing.

“He really cared about you, Carrie,” she had said after taking a long drag from her own cigarette. “I hope you know that.”

“I cared about him,” she had responded in a shaky voice after several moments of silence. “I just… I hope that he knew.”

From the little Carrie had been told, Quinn’s condition is serious. She still might lose him, she reminds herself. But she hopes desperately that she will someday have the opportunity to prove this to him.


	5. Hold On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rescue mission following Carrie/Astrid's discovery that Quinn is still alive.

Carrie doesn’t know how long she is there, pressed up against the dirty glass and staring helplessly at the body on the other side. It feels like she has been waiting forever, watching the erratic rise and fall of Quinn’s breathing and wondering if her mind is playing tricks on her.

The trance ends when she’s pulled to her feet by gentle but firm hands, grabbing her by the shoulders and guiding her out of the building.

She vaguely recognizes the man steering her as a worker from the German Embassy. He is saying something as they walk further and further out but she can’t seem to hear. It’s as if her mind is a radio and she can’t pick up the right frequency... All she hears is static. She forces herself to focus.

“We’re sending in a team right now to help him…” she hears before she begins looking around her and loses focus again.

They’ve all walked uphill several hundred yards, away from the building and away from Quinn. Astrid is close by, her mobile phone to her ear as she stares tight-lipped into the distance. She spots a dozen people decked out in hazmat suits enter the building in a hurry, carrying bags of equipment and rolling in an empty stretcher. Carrie tries to move towards them but the Embassy worker holds her back.

“I need to go help,” she says desperately, trying with shaking hands to wrench herself away.

“No, Ms. Mathison, we need you to stay out here.”

“Quinn is still in there though, he’s alive-“

“Yes. I just told you, though, that they need to send a special crew that is equipped to deal with the sarin gas in order to help him.” He enunciates each word slowly, as if speaking to a child. “I need you to stay calm, okay.”

At this comment she feels her hackles rise. She’s been told to stay calm one too many times in her life by condescending psychiatrists and medical doctors. “Stay calm?” she repeats back to him venomously.

Seeing the escalation, Astrid strides over. She nods the Embassy worker and he retreats gratefully. Astrid wordlessly guides Carrie towards one of the multiple open ambulances that have arrived on the scene and sits down, gesturing for Carrie to do the same. She hands Carrie a handkerchief; it confuses for a moment before she realizes that her face is wet and her nose is running.

“It is quite a miracle, isn’t it?” she says softly to Carrie as she stares at the building downhill. “I have never heard of anyone surviving this kind of exposure, let alone the length of time that Peter has been in there.”

Carrie snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, I guess if anyone could have found a way to survive something like this, it would have been Quinn.” After he had gone missing the week prior Carrie had worried but then reminded herself that Quinn always found a way to pull through; he’d be fine. This fatal misconception haunted her every time she pressed replay on the video depicting his torture. Perhaps her belief hadn’t been far from the truth.

Astrid smiles at Carrie’s remark, but quickly becomes serious again. “We cannot get our hopes up, you know. Just because he survived this long does not mean that he is… Out of the woods, so to speak.”

Carrie says nothing, only nods as she stares at the door where the hazmat-clad crew had disappeared. They sit together, comfortably silent, an unvoiced camaraderie forged between them by the unfolding events.

After what seems like an eternity she sees the crew emerge, wheeling a stretcher out towards the ambulances. She jogs towards them, too anxious to wait.

“What’s happening?” she asks breathlessly as she walks beside them. Her eyes fall on Quinn; there is a breathing apparatus over his face. He’s dirty, pale, unconscious, but still _alive_. Her breath catches in her throat as this news sinks in again.

One medic has taken his mask off and he addresses her curtly as they whisk him towards the ambulance.

“Weak pulse, barely breathing on his own. You’re lucky you got to him when you did.”

As they are approaching the vehicle, Carrie grabs Quinn’s hand and holds it tight. She knows logically that he probably can’t hear her but she leans in close and whispers to him anyway.

“Please hold on,” she says softly, desperately.

Carrie swears she feels a gentle squeeze in return.


End file.
